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THE pesky corellas are back in all their white-winged glory and, after a year of seeking permits, licenses and signing on all the dotted lines, Warwick Golf Club course superintendent Craig Cox can confidently put his finger to the trigger.

While the bang that comes from his 12-guage shotgun is not lethal, it will hopefully be enough to scare away the birds from the green.

A Department of Environment Resource Management approved initiative, Mr Cox said the aim of Birdfrite was to stop the birds from settling on the green and digging holes in the ground while they hunted for tree roots.

He said while bird numbers were down on last year, they were still about in their masses.

"I don't think the numbers are quite there this year, whether it's the season or what have you, but they did increase later last January so they may gain in numbers late January, early February," Mr Cox said yesterday.

Birdfrite cartridges are let off about once a day or every second day, to try and train the birds that this is not an area in which they can settle.

Warwick Golf Club president Don Stewart said Mr Cox was the only person authorised to fire Birdfrite.

"We haven't applied to kill any birds but we have spoken to DERM and we are legally now allowed to frighten them with Birdfrite," Mr Stewart said.

"But it has to be done by someone with a specific license and (Mr Cox) now has permission to do that."

The club implemented Birdfrite last January but had to seek further permits to continue operation.

On the other side of Warwick, a white blanket of feathers swoop in of an afternoon and councillor Neil Meiklejohn said they were hard to miss from his home near Condavale Dr.

"There has gotten more and more and, while they're not annoying us particularly, there certainly is a whole heap of them around," Cr Meiklejohn said.